Ben Bova - Test of Fire

“What?”

“… lone person… walk… us here on the truck…”

Alec hurried through the tunnel and got out of the metal-walled area in time to hear, “Hey, it’s a girl!”

They quickened their pace. Once outside, Alec could see a lone, slim figure heading for the truck, walking slowly but deliberately from the distant woods toward them. By the time he and his men reached the truck, she was almost in hailing distance.

“She’s unarmed,” Kobol observed.

“And good to look at,” said Gianelli.

Small and slim, wearing a stained white blouse and long slacks that fitted the curve of her hips snugly. Longish, serious, big-eyed face. Long blonde hair wisping in the breeze. She shrugged it back away from her face as she came up to the truck.

Alec said, “Looks like she’s got a definite reason for coming here.”

“Maybe she’s lonesome,” Gianelli snickered.

“Not for you, big nose,” one of the other men said.

“Can’t see anyone else around,” Kobol said, scanning the woods with binoculars. “But there could be an army out there among those trees.”

Like Hannibal’s army at Lake Trasimene, Alec thought.

He watched the girl as she calmly approached them. A stubborn face, frowning slightly in the sun. Strong jaw, prominent cheekbones, thin patrician nose. Mouth set in a determined line.

But the eyes were searching, a bit uncertain, perhaps a bit frightened.

He could feel the tension among the men as she walked closer. Ridiculous! A dozen men armed to the teeth, staring nervously at a lone unarmed girl.

The firing bolt of a rifle snicked mechanically.

Scared to death of one girl! Alec almost smiled.

“Gianelli,” he said softly, “keep an eye on the buildings. She might be a decoy.”

“Watch the flanks, too,” Kobol said to no one in particular.

“I’d rather watch her flanks,” Gianelli muttered.

The girl raised her right hand, palm open, and stopped some twenty paces from the truck. Alec walked out toward her. He knew without looking over his shoulder that Kobol was right behind him.

“My name is Angela,” she said. No smile. Her voice was unemotional, matter-of-fact.

“I’m Alec, and this is…”

“Alexander Morgan and Martin Kobol,” she said.

“You know my father.” Alec wasn’t surprised.

“He sent me here. To warn you.”

For an instant Alec felt as if the entire world hung suspended in time. He could feel the sun on his shoulders and neck, see the bright sky and the new green woods in the distance, hear the girl’s soft, wary voice. But it was all as if he were really somewhere else, far more distant than the Moon, watching the scene remotely.

“We’re not frightened by warnings,” Kobol said.

“Wait,” Alec snapped. To the girl, “Warn us about what?”

She pushed a strand of hair from her face.

“There’s a raider band heading for the airport. They saw your ships land…”

“Why would they head for us? Aren’t they frightened…?”

A smile toyed at Angela’s lips. “Scared of a few dozen men? You know how many men the raiders can put together?”

“We have enough firepower…”

“I know,” she interrupted. “They know, too. It’s your weapons they’re after.”

Kobol stepped up to her. “You’re lying. We would have detected a large group of men moving through this territory. We have sensors…”

“No shit?” She turned back to Alec. “Look, your father told me all about the platform you’ve got up in the sky. They can’t see the raiders—not down under the trees. There’s at least a couple hundred of them linking up together a few klicks from the airport. We’re trying to keep them off balance…”

“It’s a trick,” Kobol insisted.

She scowled at him.

“Where is my father?” Alec asked her.

Angela waved a hand. “Up north… seven, eight hundred klicks from here.”

“And the fissionables?”

“The what?”

So he hasn’t told her everything. “The machines and things that were in these buildings. My father has them up north with him?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. These buildings have been empty for years.”

I’ll bet. “Come on,” Alec said to Kobol, “we’ve got to get back to the airport. If there really are several hundred…”

“There can’t be,” Kobol said.

“I don’t like being called a liar,” Angela snapped. “Especially by a fughead who doesn’t know a tree from a turd.”

Alec bit his lip to keep from laughing. Kobol staggered a step backward; a lanky, helmeted, booted, armed man retreating from this tiny girl.

“Come on,” Alec said, forcing his voice to remain serious. “We can’t afford to ignore her warning. And there’s nothing left here for us. Let’s move out.” He reached for Angela’s wrist. “You can come with us.”

She pulled back slightly. “I can make it on my own.”

Holding onto her wrist, Alec said, “We’ve got the truck here. It’s faster than walking.”

She stopped arguing.

Once they piled aboard the truck and got rolling, Alec radioed Jameson. “Everything’s peaceful here,” his calm voice replied. No sign of movement except for a few birds.”

“Check with the satellite,” Alec ordered. “Have them make the most intensive scan of this area that they can.”

“They’re halfway on the other side of the globe now,” Jameson answered. “Won’t be back over here for another four hours.”

“Damn,” Alec muttered. “Well, keep a sharp watch. Protect those ships.”

“You betcha,” Jameson said.

Ferret quivered with a mixture of excitement and fear as they crouched in the brush, watching the strange ships sitting on the airfield runway and the handful of men guarding them.

“Now remember,” Billy-Joe whispered, fingering the scar across his chin the way he always did just before a fight started, “once we knock off all them guys, we got to grab their weapons fast . There’s a dozen other gangs spread around this-here airport and they’re all lickin’ their chops over them fancy guns.”

Ferret nodded and bared his teeth in what passed for a smile. But inwardly he was sick with fear. It was one thing to overrun the men standing around those weird flying machines. But the real battle would be among the rival gangs once the strangers had been wiped out.

Grab a gun as quick as you can, he told himself, and then hide in the woods. Stay hidden until Billy-Joe gives the word to get back to camp.

The first sounds of battle came to Alec’s ears while they were still several kilometers from the airfield.

“What’s that?”

It was an odd, muffled sound coming from beyond the ridge ahead of them. Soft thumps, almost like an airlock hatch slamming in a distant corridor.

Alec was sitting up on the laser mount, his legs dangling over the edge of the turntable platform.

Angela sat beside him.

She tensed at the sound. “Mortars. Will must’ve made contact…”

Alec yelled down at the driver, “Top speed! Get this truck back to the ships!”

The electric motors whined and strained, but the overloaded vehicle did not seem to move any faster as it labored up the grade to the crest of the ridge.

Angela said over the rushing wind and another trio of distant explosions, “Will Russo… he’s one of your father’s friends. He’s got a small group of us here, trying to tie up the raiders long enough to give you a chance to take off.”

“William Russo,” Kobol snapped. He’d been squatting cross-legged behind them. “So he didn’t die after all; he turned traitor along with Doug.”

Alec twisted around and squinted up into the noon sun to see Kobol. “We ought to put out flankers,” he said. “These woods could be swarming with barbarians.”